MIXED EMOTIONS…(continued)
The question keeps recurring, “why do you, cccf, concentrate on just Late-Term-Second-Trimester D&E Abortions, which you say amount to some 20,000 a year, when total abortions in America amount to over 1,200,000 a year?”
Some writers aver that it is impossible to ban Late-Term Abortions of Viable Infants (mistakenly calling the procedure Late-Term Third-Trimester Abortions) because the courts and Supreme Court have ruled that the woman’s physician has the final say on the matter.
What is the point of expending massive effort on a national scale, as was the case in the decade-long campaign to ban D&X partial birth abortion, to attempt to effect another ban on a minor (at most 2%) segment – i.e. D&E Late-Term D&E – of the overall one-point-two-million-plus abortion universe in the United States?
The reason is that, working now – with new and irrefutable research and documented data – to effect a ban on Late-Term Second-Trimester 21-to-27-weeks‘-gestation D&E Abortion, is doable. It is possible to get this done in the next decade. Whereas overturning Roe v. Wade in the next two decades is not.
Secondly, the banning of the D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure did not reduce one single abortion in the United States – simply because all abortion physicians who had been using D&X procedure reverted to the so-called “classical” late-term abortion method of D&E (Dismemberment in Uterus with suction and curratage). Banning Late-Term Second-Trimester 21-to-27-weeks’-gestation D&E Abortion (the only exception being the mother’s life in grave or mortal danger) WOULD IN FACT SAVE 20,000 VIABLE INFANTS’ LIVES A YEAR.
It is well to recall that the now-banned D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure was used to kill some 3,000 infants a year. (Whereas D&E, as noted, terminates 6 to 7 times as many infants a year.) Yet a massive and ultimately successful campaign was mounted at all levels across the nation, with the public becoming aware for the first time of the ghastly procedure used for ending the lives of these potentially-viable infants. It gained public attention and sympathetic response because the “name” – partial birth – was not only accurate and succinct but it also denoted obvious linkage to infanticide.
D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortion does not have a “catchy” name, nor is it quite so obvious that the infant is “nearly born” before being killed. But it IS the same child, at the same age, in the same condition of being viable or potentially-survivable, and just as surely terminated: Not by a scissor thrust to the back of the tiny skull, but by shredding the limbs and head from the torso of the child. The public is NOT aware of this procedure. The public has NO IDEA of the extent to which this D&E Late-Term procedure is used in America. Even many professionals in the medical field believe it to be rare and used only in medically necessary circumstances, just a few hundred a year.
These are some of the reasons why it is important now to have a concentrated campaign dealing only on this one issue. It IS achievable.
“MIXED EMOTIONS, CONFUSING OUTLOOK?” : Facts, Rulings, Opinions vis-a-vis Late-Term 2nd-Trimester D&E Abortions of Viable Infants.
The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged in 1992 (nearly 20 years after Roe v. Wade & Doe v. Bolton) that “some of Roe’s factual assumptions have been overtaken by time … and advances in neonatal care have advanced viability” from what had earlier been “true in 1973″. The Court posited, in arguing a separate point, that such advances (i.e. ”whether viability occurs at 28 weeks as was usual at the time of Roe, or at 23 or 24 weeks as it sometimes does today (1992)”) had “no bearing on Roe’s central holding that viability marks the point when the state’s interest in the fetus becomes compelling”. The Court went on to speculate that attainment of viability by extremely preterm infants could improve further, adding “…at some moment even slightly earlier in pregnancy, as it may, if fetal respiratory capacity may be somehow enhanced in the future” (PPofPa v Casey 1992).
Now (2009) it is another 17 years beyond that 1992 Supreme Court opinion, and new data from major medical research studies (of preterm births by the US NICHD at 17 university hospitals across the United States during a period of 6 years, and by the UK Epicure 1 & 2 Study Teams of that entire nation over 10 years) have in fact proven enhanced viability results for extremely preterm infants.
The UK 2006 study of infants’ births at 22 through 25 weeks’ gestation (1,408 births in England) resulted in an overall survival rate of 52%. The earliest births (152 infants at 22 weeks) had a 5% survival rate, while infants born at 24 and 25 weeks had survival rates of 42% and 65%. The United States’ NICHD Study had significantly better results, since all births in the study were at university hospitals with trained neonatal units and ICU facilities and “fetal respiratory capacity enhancement” equipment (as the Supreme Court earlier wrote): the survival rates for over 4,000 live births at NICUs with mechanical ventilation were 21% at 22 weeks gestation LMP, 37% at 23 weeks, 56% at 24 weeks and an astounding 76% at 25 weeks.
One wonders what the decisions might have been, if these or similar factual data had been germane, available and presented at the time of the 1967 UK Abortion Act forty-two years ago, or the 1973 Roe v Wade & Doe v. Bolton cases thirty-six years ago. Time continues “to overtake earlier assumptions”. Even so, certain parliamentarians in the UK recently sought to amend the 1967 Abortion Act to reduce the so-called date of effective infant viability (to, say, 20 weeks gestation) based on the Epicure research study results, and were denied – the Minister of Health apparently rejecting Epicure study data during testimony and substituting her own far lower survivability percentage numbers instead.
A current dilemma for proponents of amending the “recognized time of infant viability” in the U.S. appears to be that the Supreme Court, in its earlier rulings, deemed that irrespective of provable or probable date (weeks’ gestation) for potential viability of infants in the womb – and even acknowledging “the attainment of viability may continue to serve as the critical fact” – the final decision as to actual probable viability for each and every individual “fetus” is to be left up to the discretion of the individual abortion physician attending the child and her mother.
As the Guttmacher Institute reports, perhaps with an element of satisfaction, “thus…the determination of viability…must be left to the professional judgement of the individual physician: Provisions that (seek to) establish a specific age – usually 20 or 24 weeks – after which abortion is prohibited and, presumably, the fetus is considered de facto viable, are unconstitutional and unenforceable.”
The other key “discretion” left to the individual attending abortion physician is the determination of potential impact on a woman’s “health” if a late-term abortion of an infant at 21 or 22 weeks to 26 or 27 weeks’ gestation is not permitted, including “for mental health reasons, whether or not the patient had a previous history of mental defects”. In upholding the Ban on D&X Partial Birth Abortion, however, in 2007 the Supreme Court did not reinsert the word “Health” or seek to include a “Health Exception” clause in the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.
Returning, therefore, to examine the differences, if any, between D&X Partial Birth Late-Term Abortion Method of potentially viable infants (in 21-26-week gestation ages) versus D&E “Dismemberment-in-uterus” Late-Term Abortion Method of potentially (or now proven-to-be-better-than-50%) survivable infants in the 22 to 26 weeks’ age brackets, one must not only consider the medical procedure, but also the condition, feelings, results pertaining to the infant as well as the mother. First, however, one must ponder this question of “the abortion physician’s individual discretion and assumptions” in regard to (a) his or her assessment of the viability of an individual “fetus”, and/or (b) his or her assessment as to whether or not her or his “patient” may have a “psychological health” problem downstream if the late-term D&E abortion of the potentially-viable child is not performed. These are crucial life and death matters: Not for the mother nor the abortion physician, but for the viable child.
At this point, consider again the words of an internationally known editor – and those of his wife – in regard to the Late-Term D&E (or D&X) abortion experience they elected to undergo in 2000 with their 24-week-gestation child. Bill Keller is the Executive Editor of the New York Times. In 2002, Bill Keller was the New York Times senior writer and op-ed columnist. On June 29, 2002 (at a time of vigorous debate in Washington over Partial Birth Abortion) his long, poignant op-ed article entitled “Charlie’s Ghost” was published. He and his wife, Emma, had named the 24-week infant in her womb, whom they were about to abort, Charlie. The subtitle of the article was “Perfect babies and imperfect choices.” The Kellers discovered at this late stage from “the experts, that the chances were high – one (expert) was willing to say over 90% – that the baby would be born dead or in a vegetative state and carrying the child to term could pose some danger to Emma’s health.” They decided to end it: ”The last thing Emma was aware of before surrendering to the anesthetic was Charlie kicking madly.” Emma later said, Keller wrote, “that (if we had just let nature take its course)…we would have lost that baby, but we would not have killed that baby.”
In this brutally honest piece, the agony of late-term abortion of a potentially viable infant, to his parents, is clear. They call the child a baby, not a “fetus”. They name the baby. They realize they are killing the baby. There is no excessiveness in this piece (as evidenced in a reply to an earlier post on this blog, where the responder called abortion of a viable child “disposal of a parasite living inside a woman”). In the Kellers’ situation, the 24-week-gestation child is apparently severely or mortally impaired – worse than “something known, like Down syndrome” -although we are not told, after the abortion, what the malady was. We are not told if the procedure was D&X (permissible in 2000, where the child would be aborted whole and postmortem examination would be possible), or if it was D&E (where the child would be shredded in the womb and evacuated in pieces by suction and curettage).
The Kellers’ case – their baby Charlie – was an exceptional situation. In the overwhelming majority (probably over 95%) of the 20,000 other cases of potentially viable babies in the Late-Second-Trimester (21-26 weeks) age group aborted that year – and every year since, and for over two decades before – predominantly by D&E Dismemberment, there was no serious or mortal impairment of the infant in the womb. Furthermore, as the D&X pioneer Dr. Haskell has testified, there would have been virtually no risk to the “health” of the mothers of these late-term-aborted infants.
In the roughly thirty years that Late-Term 2nd-Trimester (21-26 weeks gestation) D&E and D&X abortions have been sought by mothers and performed by abortion physicians, at the rate of circa 20,000 per year, some 600,000 (OVER HALF A MILLION) potentially viable/survivable babies have been killed in the United States. In all cases, the individual physicians would have had to diagnose and document that every infant, at that late stage, was not viable – despite the overwhelming evidence from serious medical studies to the contrary: Or, the individual physicians would have had to predict and document that by not performing the sought-for abortions, the babies’ mothers would suffer mental health problems downstream. In other words, the law apparently allows potential depression on the part of the woman (if the individual physician so attests and documents) to trump the actual life of a survivable child.
If Emma Keller’s plaintive reminiscence – “…but we would not have killed that baby” – could be known beforehand by the 20,000 mothers who will seek late-second-trimester abortions of their potentially viable babies each year, the awful killing numbers might be dramatically reduced. At this time, it is up to the individual physicians’ discretion. In the distant future, it may be mandated by law, by banning such late-term D&E and all other late-term methods (except when the LIFE of the mother is in grave danger) just as D&X Partial Birth Abortion was eventually banned and upheld after an agonizing 12-year national debate, in which the appalled American public overwhelmingly rejected that method of D&X abortion (while not realizing there was an equally primitive method called D&E which was not being addressed nor debated and was not even considered to be banned).
One hurtful note in Bill Keller’s 2002 article was the seemingly-obligatory New York Times’ dig at the Catholic church, in an anti-Catholic throwaway line or two. Blame the Church, in part? Establishing their bona-fides as once-Catholic, or still Catholic (“my wife clings more firmly to her faith than I”), he says Emma left voicemails with the hospital’s Catholic chaplain’s number, but “he never called back”. One wonders why Emma, or Bill, could not instead have simply visited their parish priest at the nearby rectory? Or any priest at one of the dozens of Catholic churches in New York City. But Emma found consolation from a nun who (“with a wisdom that would disqualify her from Vatican office”) advised her to do “what God would want; not what the Church would want; as they are not always necessarily the same”. God Bless the nun.
Bill Keller speculates, in the 2002 article, as to what they might have decided (about aborting Charlie) if the choice had been less stark, such as his merely having Down syndrome; “would we have had the strength to ride it out?” On this theme, in late November 2009 the general counsel for News Corporation Lon Jacobs wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal eloquently and joyously defending the decisions of parents (including themselves) to have – not abort – children with Down syndrome. Unfortunately, Jacobs (who is pro-choice) says, “today, nine out of 10 American women who are told they have a child with Down syndrome choose to abort”. For those who love the youngsters and adults who participate in the Special Olympics and all other similar children with intellectual difficulties, this is potentially devastating news. What sort of a nation or civilization would this become, with a population of – in some people’s minds – only perfect or near-perfect human specimens (assuming such “perfection” could be adequately defined)?
Mr. Keller puts forward the suggestion that “in a world of market-driven health care”, he could imagine insurers refusing to cover a childhood disability that could have been detected in advance (of birth) “and prevented by aborting.” He asks, “wouldn’t that be an infringement of choice as surely as outlawing abortion?” One might equally ask today – ‘in a world of government-run health care, wouldn’t cost consciousness and social engineering dictate that any child having any disability detected in advance (of birth) be terminated by aborting?’
Considering trends in recent decades to ‘beginning-and-end-of-life-healthcare’ in some European nations, in China and elsewhere, one might lean toward having greater trust and confidence in competitive private health care providers and insurers, than in government controlled entities.
Returning to the questions of ‘ultimate discretion’ given to the individual abortionist physician regarding a decision as to viability of an infant in the womb, and also to the likelihood – or not – of a woman’s emotional breakdown some months after the abortion, enough time may have passed (once again) to be able to reopen the debate. Taking into account a virtual library of new study reports, factual data and conclusions (for example, recent neonatal studies of extremely preterm infants in various theaters of the world including Japan, UK, USA), how – one may ask – can an individual abortion doctor not take those statistical results into account? He or she must be aware of the new odds. Abortionists and abortion clinics’ managements must know that at 22 weeks LMP (and assuming that a hospital neonatal ICU is available within reasonable travel distance) an infant in the womb has a 1 in 5 chance of survivability. It is a slim chance, but nevertheless an attainable chance. At 23 weeks gestation, the odds soar to better than 1 in 3. At 24 weeks LMP, the odds are now over 50-50 (i.e. 56%). At 25 weeks, three out of every four babies survive (with or without mechanical ventilation). And at 26 weeks, survivability is virtually assured.
Since some 20,000 infants in the 21 to 26 weeks’ age-bracket are aborted each year (documented in earlier research posts/articles on this blog site); and since overall average survivability rates are 53% in the UK and higher than that in the US for extremely preterm infants in the 21 to 26 weeks’ gestation segments; it might, therefore, seem logical to assume that an equal number of 21 to 26 weeks’ pregnant women – that is, 20,000 additional women – who were seeking abortions each year, were turned down on the grounds that their babies were deemed by the abortion physicians to be viable. That hardly happened!
But since there is no factual data and no investigative research has been done on that question, any answer is speculative. The Guttmacher Institute conducts annual surveys on abortion questions directly from physicians, clinics and hospitals. The Guttmacher, therefore, could – if it so chose – get answers to those specific questions (e.g. how many 21 to 26 week-pregnant women have you advised that you cannot perform an abortion due to their infant being in all probability, or even possibly, viable?). This comprises data that the CDC cannot collect, since the CDC Annual Abortion Survey information comes from individual states’ Departments of Health forms (submitted on a voluntary basis) and such information is not asked for by the states.
Yet, even without the benefit of guidance from statistical research studies (on this question), one can visualize certain scenarios as being far more normal than rare or unusual. An abortion physician, examining a normal woman who is 24 weeks pregnant with an apparently normal infant in her womb, is asked to abort the child: He is aware of the survivability odds and has reviewed many of the recent studies conducted in the US and abroad: In spite of those odds, he judges, Solomon-like, that the child is not viable – that it could not survive outside the womb – and is therefore eligible to be killed (by D&E, shredded, divided, stripped and sucked out). That will anger some readers. However, irrespective of speculation and tone, it happens something short of 20,000 times a year. Year in, year out.
The American public, abortionist physicians, the medical profession and AMA, governing legislators and our courts have to acknowledge that “past assumptions and opinions are (continually) being overtaken by time”.
It IS time to move on and give the benefit of the doubt to living and potentially-survivable human beings, small infants in the womb, the most defenseless of God’s creatures. Babies of 21 weeks’ gestation and beyond should not be aborted (unless the mother’s life is in mortal danger), especially by D&E Dismemberment procedure. Late-2nd-trimester Abortion by D&E or by any method should be banned, just as D&X Partial Birth Abortion was banned, and the time is now for one or two bold legislators to put forward a Bill to Congress proposing such a Ban. The debate will begin again, with new information and testimony this time and it will go on for years; even on to state and circuit courts and to the highest court in the land. So be it.
(CONTINUATION WILL FOLLOW SOON: RE THE OTHER QUESTIONS RAISED: AND WHY CONCENTRATE ON LATE-TERM ONLY HERE AT CCCF: AND WHERE DOES CT FIT IN: AND RECORDS AND POSITIONS OF OUR POLITICIANS AND CANDIDATES FOR OFFICE.)
Skeptical of “Common Ground”
Rosa DeLauro, Democrat Representative from this state, Connecticut, co-sponsors a bill pitched as a ”common ground” position vis-a-vis abortion and life issues, entitled the “Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act”.
No one can be against ‘reducing unintended pregnancies’. Catholics share in the belief that premarital explicit sexual activity including intercourse should be avoided, especially by teenagers in middle-school grades and high school, and that girls and women be encouraged to say no to randy young men anxious to sew wild oats. Pro-choice and abortion advocates believe the only way to ‘reduce unintended pregnancies’ is to distribute condoms and other birth control devices, and to teach sexual activities’ awareness, to even the very youngest including pre-teens.
Despite the DeLauro/Ryan Bill’s attractive title, what the proposed Act does support is the additional funding of clinics and agencies that distribute birth control devices, associations that advocate and perform abortions, and organizations that work toward the priciple of worldwide population control.
Rep. DeLauro was the Executive Director of Emily’s List and is outspokenly pro-choice. DeLauro voted several times to keep the Partial Birth Abortion (D&X) late-term procedure from being banned. DeLauro voted on 11/7/09 against the Stupak Amendment preventing the federal funding of abortions in the House Health Care Reform Bill. Ms. DeLauro, a Catholic, put together the “House Democrats’ Catholic Statement of Principles”, signed by 55 Catholic House Democrats, who basically reserve the right to differ with the Catholic Faith and the Church on – in effect – the issue of abortion.
Co-sponsoring the DeLauro/Ryan Bill is Ohio Democrat Representative Tim Ryan, who claims vociferously to be pro-life. Ryan signed DeLauro’s Catholic Statement of Principles. More on Tim Ryan to follow.
This is a sleeper of a Bill, and should be opposed by all Catholics and all pro-life advocates. The only common ground that should be advocated by Catholic Representatives in Congress as well as by all Americns who respect the value of human life – people of all faiths and ethnic races – is the abolition of killing, by abortion, viable infants. How stunning it would have been if Catholic Representatives Tim Ryan and Connecticut’s Rosa DeLauro had proposed a Bill such as that! There can be no “common ground” or middle position or “third way” in regard to the shredding and evacuation from the womb of potentially viable infants in their 20 to 26th week of gestation by the inhuman method of D&E Dismemberment Late-Term Abortion.
Favorite Catholic Speaker Nominee Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle
I am pleased to be a sponsor and promoter of Donna-Marie to the nation’s top and favorite Catholic Speakers’ List for 2009. Please see www.FallibleDogma.com blog for the full list of 2009 favorite Catholic speaker nominees.
DEFINITIONS & SEMANTICS : LATE-TERM D&E ABORTIONS ARE NOT 3RD-TRIMESTER
Over 95% of Late-Term Dilation & Evacuation (D&E) Abortions of potentially survivable infants are performed on 21- to 26-weeks’-gestation (LMP) infants in the womb.
D&E Dilation & Evacuation procedure (dismemberment in the uterus and suction and curettage of “fetal parts”) is referred to as “the classic late-term abortion method” by the medical profession.
The (former) alternative to classic late-term D&E was the late-term D&X Partial Birth Abortion method (now banned in the U.S. by federal law). D&X was performed on the same gestation-age infants, i.e. primarily 21- to 26-weeks’ LMP.
Late-Term 21- to 26-weeks’ gestation LMP is arithmetically in the last quarter of the 2nd-trimester: Not 3rd trimester.
The banned D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure comprised predominantly late-second-trimester abortion of potentially survivable infants. The exact same conditions are true regarding D&E Dismemberment Abortion procedure: same gestation period/s, same viability conditions of the infants; same brutality and inflicted pain (albeit perhaps worse for D&E) to the child.
Since full term is normally circa 39 weeks, first trimester can be defined as conception though the 13th week; second trimester would be 14th week through the 26th week; and third trimester the remaining term of 27th to 39th or 40th week.
D&X Partial Birth Abortion was banned because the public and legislators (and, subsequently the Supreme Court) perceived the method as actually or essentially being a form of infanticide. That was because the infant (at,say, 22 to 26 weeks’ gestation) was three-quarters delivered from the mother’s body before the infant was destroyed.
There is no difference in the timing or brutality of destruction of the infant between late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion and D&X late-term Partial Birth Abortion. If D&X is now banned (because of being a form of infanticide, or for whatever other legal reasons) then late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion of potentially viable infants must be logically banned too (as being, in fact, a form of infanticide).
The core rationale for our American nation electing to Ban D&X Partial Birth Abortion – and eventually, late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion – should not comprise “to prohibit a methodology, or two methodologies, of abortion”: It should be to prohibit the killing, by a form of infanticide or virtual-infanticide, proven-survivable human infants (whether in the uterus, half out of the vagina. three-quarters’ born, or ten-seconds’-fully-delivered).
What, and when, is survivability?
The National Research Network conducted a six-year study, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health & Human Services, of four-and-a-half thousand Extremely Preterm Birth infants born at 17 university hospitals. The results are stunning, and irrefutable:
At 22 weeks’ gestation the survivability was 21% (neonatal intensive care units – nicu’s – with mechanical ventilation).
At 23 weeks’ gestation, 37% survivability (as above).
At 24 weeks’ gestation, 56 to 58% survivability (with or without mechanical ventilation).
At 25 weeks’ gestation, 76 to 78% survivability (as above).
At 26 weeks gestation, virtually-assured survivability (conclusion at 26 weeks from alternate Medical Journal -JAMA – paper).
Banning late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion of viable infants (at some point in the next decade) has nothing to do with so-called “third-trimester abortion” (performed rarely, and mainly to save the life of the mother). Late-term D&E Abortion is late-second-trimester abortion of survivable infants, currently at the rate of over 20,000 infants a year, – and the reason is almost NEVER “medically-necessary”.
Dr. Martin Haskell, the credited inventor of the D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure, testified in Washington, D.C. that the late-term D&X procedure “was never medically necessary to preserve a woman’s health”. The same, of course, is true for the identically-timed “classical” late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion procedure.
Currently, in America, over 90% of the 20,000-plus late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortions a year – of survivable infants – are justified by the abortion physicians involved as being necessary to preserve women’s “health” (legally permitted by most U.S. states’ laws). That is an unconscionable sham, that pits hypothetical potential anxiety on the part of the woman (probable for most such “diagnoses”) against the actual life of a viable human infant.
Banning Late-Second-Term D&E Dismemberment Abortions of Viable Infants is not impossible to accomplish in America. In the end, right will prevail. It may take ten years, but it will happen.
What it does take, however – first of all – is for the American public (and their elected representatives in Senate and Congress) to understand just what Late-Term D&E is, how it is performed, and how often it is performed each year. Also, the American public must know that infants really are viable – that is, they CAN survive – at an age (gestation) as early as 22 weeks in the womb. Killing a child at this age and/or beyond, by any means (except in the instance of a mother’s life being in grave danger) is actually a form of infanticide.
Why No Alternative Research Institute to Guttmacher?
There are 22 articles on this cccf blog site, comprising research over the past year on annual legal abortions in the United States, and in particular the identification of that element which are extremely-late-term D&E abortions of potentially viable infants (21-weeks-and later gestation LMP).
There is only one source in the U.S. that identifies abortions is sufficient detail as to period/s of gestation, and that is the CDC. Even so, that CDC data (published in CDC’s Annual Abortion Surveillance Reports) relies on statistics voluntarily supplied by the individual states’ departments of health. Several states do not report at all to the CDC (most notably, California), and many states file only partial information. In regard to extremely late-term abortions of 21-weeks lmp and over, only 32 states supplied information to the CDC – see detailed analysis of CDC 2005 Abortion Surveillance Report data in cccf articles further down entitled “Understanding the Tables and Data in the CDC Annual Abortion Surveillance Reports”, and “Summarizing CDC Abortion Data Re Late-Term (21-Weeks-Plus)…”, and “Deciphering CDC’s Annual Abortion Surveillance Reports”.
The CDC’s data for 2005 (the latest available Report, published in late 2008) lists total abortions in the U.S. as 820,151. The CDC acknowledges that this number is probably some 400,000 short of the true number (due to non-reporting and under-reporting by over a dozen major states). The Guttmacher Institute lists total abortions in the U.S. in 2005 as 1,206,200, while also stating that this number may be somewhat low since reported data is based on surveys to clinics, hospitals and physicians and certain respondents could be reticent to answer fully.
The Guttmacher Institute does not publish data for extremely late-term abortions (21 weeks and later). The level of published or available detail from the Guttmacher Institute is considerably less than that found in the CDC Annual Reports. So both sources, which are the ONLY sources for certain levels of detail on abortions in America, have inherent limitations.
The Guttmacher Institute is a research foundation basically in favor of abortion rights, strongly supporting pro-choice organizations. It might not always be in the interests of the pro-choice cause and/or of the Guttmacher Institute to look into and publish certain uncomfortable facts - such as the prevalence of 21-weeks-and -later D&E Dismemberment Abortion in America, or of the actual surviveability rates (i.e. viability) for infants at 22 weeks and later gestation .
My question is, why – after four decades of highly emotional debate on aspects of abortion in America (including the 12-year-long campaign to ban late-term Partial Birth D&X Abortion) – is there no equivalent alternative Research Foundation in existence, analyzing statistical information, data and medical papers, and supporting pro-life organizations and advocates with serious factual studies and reports?
It seems that U.S. billionaires and wealthy foundations are funneling massive funding to organizations that promote population reduction and control, birth control, abortion on demand at any time in the gestation cycle of infants – in the U.S. and around the world – and that none seem motivated or interested in founding a think tank or “institute” to verify or counter the work of the former.
It takes serious research to get to the true answers. My hunch is that no one in this country has been aware of the extent to which viable infants are terminated by Late-Term (i.e. primarily late-second-trimester in the 21 to 26 weeks’ gestation phase) D&E Abortion. Those that are or were even aware of the late-term D&E procedure thought that it was extremely rare, and that perhaps a few hundred infants were aborted that way each year (due to the life of the mother being at risk). The real number is over 20,000 a year (and the life of the mother is hardly ever at risk, as testified by the doctor who popularized the former procedure known as D&X Partial Birth Abortion performed on identical gestation term infants). This incredible number; the widespread understanding of the late-term D&E methodology (shredding in the womb and vacuuming); and the performance/records of each state in the U.S. in this regard; all such facts should have been common knowledge two decades ago!
Some (pro-life) wealthy philanthropist – or a group of such men and women – should step forward and fund and form a new Research Institute in this country to get the real facts, and publish annual reports and periodic professional and medical papers on Abortion in America with emphasis on D&E Late-Term Abortion, state by state . As someone who founded two international consulting firms, steeped in research for half a decade, I know it can be done and done well. There needs to be an alternative to the Guttmacher Institute. Why is there none?
Letter to Editor of New York Magazine
In your August 10, 2009 New York Magazine piece by Gale Scott re “High Abortion Rate Worries NY Experts”, let me add some additional facts.
In 2005, the CDC Annual Abortion Surveillance Report lists New York State as having 124, 849 legal abortions, with New York City at 88,891.
Your article’s figure of 90,157 is for the City only. Most of the other state-wide abortions are done nearby, like Westchester County etc.
What may be of equal or greater concern to NY state experts is the fact that over 3000 NY abortions are extremely-late-term (21-weeks-gestation and beyond, as listed by the CDC) D&E abortions of potentially survive-able infants. The NICHD Neonatal Research Network Study (1998 to 2003 by 17 university hospitals) Report concluded that – for all hospitals with neonatal-equipped units – the surviveablity rates for extremely preterm birth infants were: 22 weeks 21%; 23 weeks 37%; 24 weeks 57%; 25 weeks 78%. At 26 weeks, surviveabilty is virtually assured.
Thus 3000-plus D&E abortions of NY state infants at this stage of potentially-viable gestation is essentially a different category of “fetus destruction” (term used by Justice Ginsberg), and is disturbing in that they are the same term infants that were aborted by the former Partial Birth Abortion (D&X) method.
The D&X Partial Birth Abortion method (banned in 2003, upheld by the SC in 2007) was used to terminate some 3000 extremely late-term infants annually in the entire United States. Now New York alone terminates over 3000 of these same extremely late-term infants annually. I say “over 3000” in the 21-weeks-and-beyond category, as the CDC Report has an extra column entitled “unknown” gestation, of which there are 5,662 abortions (in 2005), and some of these may be extremely late term infants as well.
However, New York is not the abortion capital of the United States. California is.
California has not reported annual abortions to the CDC (or to the Guttmacher Institute except on an individual clinic basis) since 1997. In that year, California’s total abortions numbered 310,000, some 23% of the United States’ total. In the current time frame, California’s total abortions are estimated by cccf to be well over 250,000. The California Dept. of Healthcare Services’ Report lists Medi-Cal funded abortions in the state 80,069, with another 11,000 non-reported funded abortions, as listed in 2005 and 2007 reports. In 1997, the Medi-Cal funded abortions in California numbered 111,600 (for medicaid qualifying recipients) costing state taxpayers over $40 million. (Expenditure for the 52,930 fee-for-service funded abortions segment cost $23,619,664.) Your article notes that New York state’s expenditure on funded abortions “is costing the state at least $16 million in Medicaid spending annually, and City taxpayers still more through a city Health and Hospitals Corp. policy..”); i.e. less than half California’s funded abortions’ cost. These amounts being paid for by state taxpayers seem to indicate that any proposed health-care overhaul legislation before the house and senate will undoubtedly seek to have ALL abortions paid for by the government (taxpayers).
Lastly, having considered New York’s extremely-late-term abortions of viable infants total per year as deeply disturbing, California’s is near-catastrophic. California’s number for 21-weeks-and-beyond D&E abortions equals an estimated 6,800 annually (with those funded by Medi-Cal at 2,500.)
The total number of extremely-late-term D&E abortions of viable infants in the United States numbers over 20,000 per year. This fact, in truth, is something for NY and other states’ experts to worry about. It’s not just cost. It’s viable lives, being “destructed”.
Juan O’Callahan
cccf amdg
U.S. NICHD Neonatal Research Network Study Corroborates UK EPICure Studies’ Data
Between 1998 and 2003, researchers at the National Research Network (funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Services) conducted a study of Extremely Preterm Birth infants at 17 major university hospitals in the U.S. The rates of survivability for this three-to-five year sample of 4,446 U.S. preterm infants born between 22 weeks to 25 weeks’ LMP gestation were considerably better than the rates of survivability of identical preterm infants born in the U.K. at 22 weeks to 25 weeks’ gestation, for both the initial and the second EPICure studies.
The U.S. 1998/2003 Study Data for survivability was as follows: 22 weeks 5%; 23 weeks 26%; 24 weeks 56%; 25 weeks 76%. For those infants who were mechanically ventilated at 22 and 23 weeks, the rates of survivability leapt from 5% to 21% and from 26% to 37% respectively.
The results for the Initial EPICure 1995 Study (all England, Wales & Ireland) were: 22 weeks 5%; 23 weeks 16%; 24 weeks 42%; 25 weeks 65%. The overall rate of 41% survivability for this preterm group improved to 52% in the Second EPICure Study (England) in 2006, with corresponding increases in each of the four weeks’ gestation segments (e.g. c 6%, 20%, 50% and over 70% respectively).
The probable reason for better U.S. NRN Study results was likely due to all births in the U.S. sample taking place in university hospitals having neonatal intensive care units, while the U.K. studies were nation-wide (including smaller and less fully-equipped hospitals and less specialized teams in some cases). Nevertheless, the post-2000 results are remarkably similar. What is certain is that over 20% of infants at 22 weeks’ gestation can survive if born at that stage (they are viable) if the hospital and staff have experience and ventilator-equipped NICUs. Even without ventilator assist, over one quarter of all babies can survive at 23 weeks, well over one half can survive at 24 weeks, and three quarters can survive at 25 weeks’ gestation. These are awesome results, considering that full term birth is around 39 weeks.
The archaic and arbitrary setting of 24 weeks as a benchmark for abortion for any reason in both the U.K. Abortion Act of 1967 (and to 28 weeks in some permissible cases) and in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 were based on then-held belief/s that viability (survivability) was not remotely possible for an infant until the 25th or 26th week of gestation, and even so, very marginally. Both nations have become more lax over the past 35 to 42 years, allowing abortions of babies through 28 weeks’ gestation and beyond for questionable and hardly verifiable reasons or ‘diagnoses’.
Live births in England and Wales in 2006 were c. 690,000. Live births in the U.S. in 2005 were c. 4,100,000; about six times that of England/Wales. Using the U.K. EPICure Studies’ Data as a benchmark, and a U.S. factor of six times, it would indicate that there are on the order of 11,000 extremely premature babies born in the U.S. each year in the 22 to 25 weeks’ gestation segments, and that about 6,500 of these babies actually survive each year (and most of them grow to adulthood and live without neuro-developmental impairment).
At the same time, we know that over 20,000 babies in the 21-26 weeks’ gestation segment are killed each year by D&E Dismemberment Abortion surgical technique. With these new (i.e. the last 5 to 15 years) national studies’ data publicly available, we know that well over half of these babies would have survived if born at that moment, instead of being shredded in the womb and evacuated by suction/curratage. The data is irrefutable. The message is obvious.
The British rationale of 42 years ago does not apply, not then, not now. Babies – not fetuses – are certainly potentially viable at 22 weeks’ gestation and beyond, and they should not be legally killed by any medical method or procedure, but especially not by D&E Dismemberment.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said; “There can be no peace as long as we make war against the unborn child”. The author of the award-winning site Chronicles From The Front ( http://fidetrat.blogspot.com/ ) added that Mother Teresa also said; “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want”.
Revisiting Aspects of the D&X (Partial Birth Abortion) Ban Act
It took over 12 years to get a Federal Ban enacted on the Late-Term procedure called Partial Birth Abortion (D&X, which stands for “dilation and extraction”, applicable primarily to potentially viable babies in the post-21-weeks’ gestational stage). The first Bill (approved by House & Senate) to Ban D&X was presented to President Clinton in June 1995: he vetoed it. A second attempt was made in 1998 and an approved Bill was presented to the President for signature. President Clinton vetoed it. Both times the Senate was unable to override those vetoes. After President Bush was elected, he signed into law a new approved Bill, called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The Act was challenged in the courts, and eventually – in 2007 – the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Act to Ban the D&X procedure by a vote of 5 to 4.
Any attempt by congressional legislators and/or the U.S. public to Ban the equally grotesque alternative procedure designated D&E (meaning “dilation and evacuation” – by means of shredding and suction), also primarily applicable to Late-Term potentially viable babies in the post-20-weeks’ gestation stage, has to consider that it could take a decade or more to accomplish.
Before D&X was banned, it was performed on approximately 3,000 babies a year. (The procedure became well understood by the public, because of its grotesqueness, which was to give actual birth to the child’s entire body except for the head, which was punctured with scissors, drained, collapsed and extracted; nearly 70% of the American public approved of a Ban on this procedure.)
Conversely, the legal D&E procedure is now performed on approximately 20,000 post-20-weeks’ babies a year, on the basis of questionable diagnoses “to preserve the health of the mother”. The procedure itself is not understood by the American public. The public is not aware of the number of Late-Term babies aborted annually by this procedure. Nor is the public aware that the Ban on D&X Partial Birth Abortion did not and has not reduced the number of Late-Term Abortions in the U.S. by a single child. After the final D&X Ban was upheld by the Supreme Court, those abortions reverted to being performed by D&E, the more common method called by the medical profession “the classic late-term abortion method”. Justice Ginsburg recognized earlier that banning D&X would have no impact whatsoever in reducing Late-Term Abortions, for she stated in her concurring remarks in the prior Stenberg v. Carhart Supreme Court case that (in regard to the D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedural ban): “This law does not save any fetus from destruction, for it targets only ‘a method of performing abortion’.”
(Legal language can be so stark: ”…does not save any fetus from destruction…”: This, in regard to 22 to 26 weeks’ gestation viable babies.)
The D&E procedure was described by Dr. Martin Haskell (the Ohio doctor who popularized his preferred D&X method) in a 1992 comparative paper – reference Congressional Record, H10631, 9/19/1996: ”Classic D&E (relies) upon dismemberment to remove the fetus…Classic D&E is accomplished by dismembering the fetus inside the uterus with instruments through an adequately dilated cervix…However, most surgeons find dismemberment at twenty weeks and beyond to be difficult due to the toughness of fetal tissues at this stage of development…” Dr. Haskell later testified that in regard to his new method, D&X, it “was never medically necessary to preserve a woman’s health.” Presumably, he would have said the same in regard to D&E, since the stages of abortion by both methods (“at twenty weeks and beyond”) are identical; only the procedure differs.
Definition of late-Term D&E does not require horrific pictures and/or diagrams to make the point. Clinically put, it requires extreme cervical dilation over two days, introduction of surgical instruments into the uterus and – using the cervix as a fulcrum – disassembling the child’s arms and legs by shredding them apart, crushing the torso and head, then vacuuming out the “fetal parts” and scraping the lining of the womb (curratage) for smaller pieces with a spatula device. According to one New York Abortion Clinic’s advertising, most other clinics do not use ultrasound during and/or after the operation, thereby risking leaving “fetal tissue” inside the woman’s uterus.
It is well to note that there are indeed a few persons (living in the U.S. and Canada today) who were born at 21 weeks’ gestation. The surviveability percentages of extremely premature babies born at 22 weeks to 26 weeks’ gestation rises rapidly…from 5% at 22 weeks, 16% at 23 weeks, 42% at 24 weeks, 65%% at 25 weeks, and virtually assured to survive – over 85% – at 26 weeks (sources, EPICure Study data and articles in JAMA).
It is important to take note, at this point, of the rationale used to justify the federal Ban Act on Partial Birth Abortion by Congress and by the Supreme Court. The main reason/s have to do with the fact that the child (“living fetus”) is (1) intentionally and deliberately vaginally delivered in toto except for the head (“the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the mother’s body”); and thus (2) allowing the abortionist to “perform the overt act that kills the partially delivered living fetus”. In other words, the method is too close to a full live birth, in which case killing the living fetus with the head as well as the fetal trunk just outside the vagina would comprise criminal infanticide. The reasoning did not take into account, nor did the legislators debate, the potential viability of the child outside of the womb. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act does permit the procedure to take place to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury (but NOT for any other reason such as to preserve the ‘health” of a woman).
The primary rationale justifying the Ban on D&X Partial Birth Abortion (in the opinion of the Congress and the Supreme Court) would thus not apply to D&E (Dismemberment in the Uterus) Late-Term Abortion. All the work, such as one may call it, is done inside the womb. There is no “too close to call” near-birth situation. Except that the babies are at the exact same gestational ages in D&E Late-Term Abortion as in D&X Late-Term Abortion: And with the currently legal D&E Dismemberment method, there are 6 to 7 times as many viable babies killed (“destruction of fetuses”) per year as were terminated by the D&X method.
If killing 3,000 viable babies a year by D&X Partial Birth Abortion (puncturing the skull) is worthy of being banned in this country, then surely the killing of 20,000 viable babies a year by D&E Dilation & Evacuation Abortion (shredding in the womb) should be banned, for the same REAL reason: It is the destruction of living and potentially viable children at a point in their gestation when they have been proven to have good chances of survivability. Not because it is a method ‘too close to call” to birth or to something else, i.e. infanticide. It IS infanticide.
It may well take another 10 or 12 years to ban this primitive D&E method, in this country; but Late-Term D&E will be banned. As a society we cannot tolerate such a level of barbarity. There is strong disagreement and an enormous lobby of opposition – proponents of Late-Term Abortion do not consider the child a child, even at 22-and-beyond weeks’ gestation. They feel the fetus is an inanimate object and that Late-Term D&E Abortion is extremely rare, and justified even for a reason such as the anxiety or future mental state of the woman. One responder to these cccf articles referred to the baby – at this stage of gestation – as a “parasite”, and the author as a “sick —-”: Feelings run strong.
Somehow, we have to get beyond irrational stridency, and open up our minds and hearts to what the facts really are. No rhetoric; just facts. Facts about viability of 21-weeks-and-beyond babies. Facts about the number of babies killed this way per year, in this country. Facts about the method of D&E destruction. Facts about who these babies’ mothers mostly are. Facts about the moral versus legal definition of infanticide.
For some reason, even Catholics and former opponents of Partial Birth Abortion, do not want to open up their minds to this D&E Late-Term Abortion issue this time around. They seem to be exhausted, or too embarrassed to think about D&E facts, or too concerned by other matters. This too will change. This will become one of the pivotal moral and political issues of the next decade, the period from 2010 to 2020. D&E Late-Term Abortion by Dismemberment in the womb will cease to be, just as being sentenced to be hung-drawn-and quartered in the 16th century could not be conceived of in this day and age.
A Beautiful, yet Awful Statement
Awful in the sense of awe-full.
Mother Theresa of Calcutta, now Blessed, said these words (possibly in the company of then-President Clinton and his wife, at an annual Washington Prayer Breakfast): ”There can be no peace in this world as long as we make war against the unborn child…the most vulnerable…”
We too, in America, have to consider this, dwell on these words.
We can start by ending the late-term termination, by D&E Abortion, of post-viability babies. Babies of 22 to 25 weeks gestation have been proven to have reasonable chances of survivability (see UK nation-wide EPICure Study summarized in a Post article below) with 30% improvement in the UK neonatal success rate regarding these extremely premature babies over the past decade.
Dismembering a viable child, whether in the womb or ouside of the womb, is the most primitive of human actions conceivable.
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